Going to Chengde

This past weekend I and six others traveled the four or so hours by train to the neighboring city of Chengde to hang out, get away from the program for a couple of days, and generally just see see the sites. We took a train there, which wasn't so bad. It wasn't like the trains in America, with their general cleanliness, legroom, and seat backs that are not completely vertical, but it wasn't too bad.

It seems that on trains in China, the conductors--besides doing normal conductor-ey things like checking your ticket every few minutes--also sell random products and lead train games. On the ride to Chengde, one of the conductors taught the car how to do multiplication between long numbers super fast. Then she tried to sell us a practice book. On the way back it was mostly 3D pictures of animals and Chinese landmarks, like the Great Wall, eyeglass repair kits, and some other book. I wasn't really paying attention at that point, but you'll find out why later. Anyway, this was train game number one:

After four and a half hours on that train, arriving in Chengde was particularly satisfying.

As we exited the train station, we were immediately bombarded with loud voices and signs attempting to entice us into following a guide to a hotel or hostel. Since we had not actually made reservations anywhere, we decided to take one hostel man up on his offer, which turned out to be a pretty good deal. As there were seven of us, we got our own eight-person room, with lockers for our bags during the day, and our own air conditioning unit.

The bathrooms had nice enough showers, and there was a courtyard with clothes lines on which we could hand wet clothes or towels.

The front room with the desk and all that was rather nice as well. It had a little side room to hang out it, a dining room sized table, and a selection of board games and English books to choose from, if you were looking to just hang out and relax for a bit.

It was also home to a small poodle named Fei Fei who was simply overjoyed about, well, everything. The dog was something like a little bundle of nerves on legs that insisted on sniffing anything that didn't notice it, and running away from some things that did. I am fairly sure that it's decisions on who to run away from were completely arbitrary, however, and may have depended on the color of their shoes.

After settling our stuff into the hostel, we headed out to our first site-seeing location. On the way, I discovered that Chengde is actually settled in a valley between a cliff and some mountains. The city was small enough that you could see the cliff between the buildings as you walked.

As we arrived at our first location, we had the unfortunate opportunity to meet a person dressed up as a character who I can only assume was meant to be Minnie Mouse.

The place was called "The Mountain Resort Scenic Area". It had apparently been one of the emperor's summer getaways, and if it had been sentient, it would have been vain as a peacock. It had wide open lawns, a river running through the middle, and pagodas sprinkled through the whole place.

We saw some random bird cages hanging from the trees, which I later discovered is, in some places in China, a popular old man's hobby. They bring their pet birds out with them, and set up the cages so the birds can socialize while they do the same.

We took some photos, which are pretty boring, except for the fact that no one seems to know what we're doing...

and we played Frisbee for a while, but lost it in some long grass, which one of us then had to go after.

We saw some more pretty views, which at this point I was getting kind of tired of,

and then we decided to climb up a mountain (hill) to see the pagoda and view at the top. Since this is China, there were stairs up the mountain.

There were views of the whole park, which was cool.

We spent a while at the top hanging out, swing dancing, singing songs, and generally being crazy American tourists (though three of us technically weren't American). We did the jumping photos, and the kung-foo style photos, and and one really cool picture that turned out amazing, if I do say so myself.

Then we hiked down, across the park, and back out the front gate.

The walk back to the hostel--since all buses stop running at 7:30--was pretty uneventful, except for the fact that everything except karaoke bars and beer gardens were closed, so we had dinner in a courtyard full of drunk people. Then we went to bed. Which was, after that long day, exciting in and of itself.